
Virgo Rising – Tristan
Similar artists: Wednesday, Big Thief, Lomelda
Genre: Indie Rock, Alternative Rock
You can understand an era based on people’s romantic pursuits. Back in Europe in the 1930s, writing love poetry was seen as one of the purest pursuits, and broken-hearted individuals would leap into the Danube. Granted, this was certainly taking things too far.
But the reverse is true as well. In 2023, there’s little romance to anything. We have incredible technology and horrible wars. And we have the experts paid to explain to us how both of these things work. Neither holds any mystery. Not even love or violence ignites passion. But things may still change.
Virgo Rising’s “Tristan” is an alt-rock song bursting at the seams with nervous energy and a full-on, truthful, yet naive idealism. This may be a song about young love, but it rings out with the fateful tragedy of a mermaid calling the sailors out into the tall waves. The emotional vocals wrap around the dynamic instrumental and create a sound that could only be delivered by a bunch of true believers. Maybe it’s a time of change after all.
Endless Wellness – Schöne Dinge
Similar artists: Tocotronic, The Düsseldorf Düsterboys, Isolation Berlin, International Music
Genre: Folk rock, Indie Rock
It’s unbearably unsettling to hear someone tell you about their misery in the German language. You see, these are not words ever designed to express purely sadness but something closely related to madness and containing a considerable dose of ambition. Someone tells you that they’re sad while speaking German, and you politely hand them your wallet and make room.
Germans singing such songs could get banned for the simple reason that they just help to make the rest of the world nervy. Austrians, the Swiss and the people of good ol’ Liechtenstein, on the other hand, are under far less strain from collective judgement. Their borders have tended to be more flexible than a Chinese gymnast’s hips. History has made it so that their songs of woes tend to be wholly believable.
Comedy is not something that you associate with the German language, but tension certainly is. Endless Wellness’s “Schöne Dinge” blend the two together, and the result is both natural-sounding and unexpected. It ends up being a kind of Central European post-punk, a distant relative of English lads barking about how bad the weather is. It’s a polite song about deciding to be no longer polite, a Monday morning anthem for people who can’t trust themselves after a cup of coffee, too many.